Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at why some students don’t like the OMNY cards that let them ride subways and buses for free. We’ll also get details on a judge’s decision not to disclose the identities of jurors in Luigi Mangione’s trial in New York, which starts next month.
One disintegrated when it was mistakenly put through the wash, and another when it became damp in the rain. Others met their demise when they were bent.
We’re talking about the OMNY cards that let New York City students ride subways and buses for free. The passes are made of paper.
The cards are flimsy, students say, according to a report released today by the office of City Councilman Harvey Epstein. The standard-issue OMNY cards — the ones carried by paying customers — are hard-edge plastic. Many students in the report say theirs should be, too.
The report says the student cards are also prone to malfunctions and difficult to replace. Many students say it takes days for a new card to arrive, forcing them to pay the full $3-per-ride fare. Epstein, who sees the shortcomings of student cards as an economic justice issue, is expected to join transit advocates outside City Hall today to press for changes to the student card system.
The student OMNY cards, which were introduced nearly two years ago, were a step up from the previous MetroCards. The OMNY cards increased the number of daily trips students could take to four. With the MetroCards, students could take only three rides a day, and only on school days from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. The OMNY cards, by contrast, can be used at all hours — a plus for students with jobs, or who are involved in sports or other extracurricular activities far from home — and are good all year, not just on days when school is in session.
The transit system is a lifeline for the city’s more than one million students. About 1.5 million student OMNY cards are printed for public, charter and private schools each year. Neither the city’s Department of Education nor the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways and buses, would say how many students used them last year. The program costs about $280 million, with the city paying around $50 million and the M.T.A. and the state covering the difference.
The report released by Epstein describes students’ frustrations. Some say they have gone weeks without replacement cards. Others laminated their cards, hoping to preserve them. But the cards eventually conked out.
Some students also say the cards are an anachronism in the digital age. They replaced MetroCards that had been provided to public school students since 1997, 20 years before most of this year’s high school seniors were born.
Juniper Wang, a member of the youth activist committee of Transportation Alternatives, a transit advocacy group, wants a tap-and-go option that students could install on their phones. (Janno Lieber, the chairman of the transit agency, said in 2024 that the OMNY system would function on students’ phones in 2025, “when all of the software is done.”)
And Maya Morozov, a student at Trinity School, a private school on the Upper West Side, said that there is a disconnect between the adults who implemented the student card system and the young people who use it.
“It’s easy in government if you don’t have kids and don’t hear about this,” she said. “You make this change and don’t see how it actually plays out.”
Shanifah Rieara, the M.T.A.’s chief customer officer, said the agency was committed to improving the student OMNY cards and listening to feedback from students. She said she knows firsthand the issues with the cards: Her 8-year-old daughter had to replace several after water spilled on them.
She said the M.T.A. had been working on several changes, including allowing students to tap and pay at turnstiles with a phone, as paying passengers can. The agency also plans to replace the paper cards with a durable plastic version around the 2027-28 school year.
But M.T.A. officials want to make sure that whatever changes they introduce work seamlessly before they roll them out across the city. They do not want students to miss class because of potential malfunctions — or feel tempted to jump the turnstile. In the second quarter, nearly half of bus riders and more than 10 percent of subway riders skipped the fare, according to the M.T.A.
Weather
Expect a mostly sunny day, with a high near 87 and a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning and early afternoon. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 72 and a chance of showers and thunderstorms after midnight.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Saturday (Feast of the Assumption).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I’m happy to work in partnership with your administration, but Mr. Mayor, you are 90 percent of what could be different here.” — Rabbi Rick Jacobs, one of an invited group of rabbis who pleaded with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to tone down his anti-Israel messaging
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For Mangione’s trial in New York, an anonymous jury
The 12 jurors in Luigi Mangione’s murder trial in New York won’t be selected until next month. On Tuesday, a judge said they will not be identified publicly.
Mangione is set to go on trial for the 2024 killing of a health care insurance executive outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The judge handling the case, Justice Gregory Carro, said that prosecutors had requested an anonymous jury. They cited the publicity around the case, as well as threats made against potential witnesses.
Lawyers for Mangione took issue with the decision. Withholding the addresses of prospective jurors is routine, they said, but also concealing their names may prejudice their deliberations. Jury members could “infer that such protection is necessary because the defendant is uniquely dangerous,” his lawyers said.
Carro said that anonymity was an “appropriate and necessary safeguard.” Disclosing jurors’ names “poses an unjustifiable risk of interference with the administration of justice,” Carro said.
This is not the first time that a judge in a high-profile case has allowed jurors’ identities to be shielded. In 2024, the names of the jurors in Donald Trump’s criminal trial and in the trial of Daniel Penny — a former Marine who was ultimately acquitted of choking a homeless man to death in a subway car — were not disclosed.
METROPOLITAN diary
In the East Village
Dear Diary:
In fall 2021, I visited my brother-in-law in the East Village. His husband had died in March. They had lived together in their rent-controlled apartment for over 30 years.
The apartment had not changed much since my last visit, with the exception of the urn that contained his husband’s ashes and was prominently displayed.
We had talked many times about holding a memorial service, but my brother-in-law had said he just could not bear to say a final goodbye.
One day while I was there, an exterminator came to perform the apartment’s semiannual pest-control treatment. He had been providing the service regularly for some time and asked about my brother-in-law’s husband’s whereabouts.
My brother-in-law pointed to the urn and explained what had occurred since the exterminator had last been there.
Visibly moved, the exterminator asked if he could touch the urn.
With my brother-in-law’s permission, he approached the urn, murmured a prayer, kissed two fingers of his right hand and then placed them on the urn.
— June Torrance
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson, Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post New York City Gave Students Free Transit Cards. They Have Feedback. appeared first on New York Times.
